


Mixed Bag

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Get-Together Fic, Grantaire pov, Halloween, Les Mis Halloween Exchange 2019, M/M, clown noses featured minus the clowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 14:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21282941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: Éponine and Grantaire are chaperoning Gavroche on his trick-or-treating adventure when they run into two familiar faces.Warnings:brief alcohol consumption
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 184





	Mixed Bag

**Author's Note:**

> My second fic for [Richard-Gayson](http://Richard-Gayson.tumblr.com) for the Les Mis Halloween exchange! I couldn't pick between angsty ExR and Friendship Fluff, so they get both! :D
> 
> One thousand thanks, as always, to my incredible and patient beta-reader [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait)!

“Trick or treat!” announces Gavroche with more gusto than Grantaire would have expected before tonight, holding out his pumpkin pail.

“Oh,” the woman at the door coos, “Home Alone! How precious.”

Behind Gavroche, he and Éponine nod. The Power Ranger costumes that they’d planned on had met an untimely end at the Halloween parade several days prior in an unfortunate incident involving a large pot of chili, a team of assholes, and Jehan’s fists. Fortunately, Gavroche has been a really great sport about it (not the least of which because he’d been involved), and the last-minute costumes have been going over surprisingly well.

“Can I also get some for my brothers?” he hears Gavroche ask. “They got sick, so they had to stay at home with _Abuela.”_

“And so thoughtful! Yes, of course you may.” She continues holding out the candy bowl as Gavroche digs through it. “What were they going to be?”

“Old Man Marley and the Pigeon Lady,” lies Gavroche smoothly as he makes his selections. 

“What a shame. Maybe next year?”

“Maybe,” he smiles, depositing the candy into his bags. “Happy Halloween!”

The door shuts, and Gavroche’s joyful affectations summarily drop. 

“Hey, you’re supposed to be finding Twix and Reese’s for me and R,” Éponine scolds. 

“She didn’t have any, you’re gonna hafta settle for Kitkats,” sighs the vertically-challenged con-artist. “C’mon, rumor is that the fourth floor all give out big candy bars, and the top floor’s supposed to be hosting a party for people under fifteen, aka _me._ Gonna blow those 'teenagers' out of the motherfucking water."

There was a time when Éponine and Grantaire might have attempted to call Gavroche on his language, but those days are long behind them, and anymore they’re satisfied not to be getting weekly letters from the school. Éponine gives an exasperated smile. “All right Free Willy, let’s get moving then.”

They advance to the next door, and Gavroche knocks before reassuming his innocent persona. It swings open, and Grantaire nearly falls over, Gavroche’s rehearsed lines lost to him.

“Hello there, who are y—Grantaire?” 

Years ago Grantaire had made a personal wager with himself over whether or not Enjolras was the type to dress up for Halloween; he’d always leaned toward ‘no,’ but nothing could have prepared him for Enjolras in a horizontally-striped Ernie-sweater and corduroy trousers, complete with a shitty red clown nose.

“Hey Enjolras,” he mutters to the floor, jamming his hands into his pockets and suddenly extremely aware that his ‘costume’ gives the appearance of having recently returned from a dumpster-diving excursion.

**“Oh,”** Gavroche exclaims much more loudly than necessary, **“is this Angel-ass?”**

_The parentless bastard._

Where Grantaire is left trying not to expire on the spot, Éponine seems much more involved with her efforts not to bite off her lip from holding back laughter. Both of them: disowned.

Combeferre appears behind Enjolras in a flawless Bert-sweater and orange nose, eyebrows raised. “Grantaire?” 

This seems to shake Éponine from her struggle. “Combeferre?” 

A smile. “Éponine.”

“You know Ferre?” Grantaire interrupts, desperate for the change in topic.

“He stops by the library.”

“She works at the library,” Combeferre explains to an equally puzzled-looking Enjolras.

“Right. Of course.” Enjolras’s smile looks stiff and uncomfortable (and he was just called an objectifying nickname by a ten year-old who obviously picked it up from Grantaire, _of course_ he’s stiff and uncomfortable).

“Well,” Combeferre says with a firm clap of his hands, “I know you all are busy, but we’d be happy to have you in for a minute if you want to rest.”

Grantaire is fully prepared for Gavroche to bat down the offer like a Williams sister playing Wii tennis, but the kid seems determined to ruin Grantaire’s life tonight. “Got any hot chocolate?”

“No, but we can certainly fix that,” Combeferre tells him.

“Awesome.” Without awaiting further invitation, Gavroche ushers himself in between the two men.

Grantaire tries to exchange a look with Éponine, but she’s already letting herself in as well, bumping Combeferre with her shoulder as he turns to follow. Enjolras and Grantaire are left staring at one another until Enjolras at last clears his throat, motioning into the apartment. “We also have tea, if that’s more to your tastes.”

Grantaire’s ‘tastes’ at the moment involve his good friends Jimmy, Johnnie, Jamie, and Jack, but this doesn’t seem like the right answer to volunteer right now. “Hot chocolate sounds fine,” comes his gruff response, pointedly avoiding eye-contact as he pushes his way past Enjolras through the doorway.

Enjolras and Combeferre’s apartment looks like it’s owned by two proper adults, very unlike his and Éponine’s mismatched jumble of furniture and cookware and dirty clothes. But then, what else could he have expected of The Perfect Man and The Perfect Partner of The Perfect Man? They’ve never said as much, but they’ve never needed to: the way they work perfectly in-sync with one another, balancing and reading each other completely without ever having to exchange a word? They’re fucking domestic—Bert and Ernie matching costumes _domestic,_ peak representation of what the gay agenda can achieve.

Meanwhile, Grantaire is still in his bitter queer phase and showing no signs of changing anytime soon.

Éponine and Combeferre are already discussing some book or another that the man must have checked out last time he was in the library. Grantaire thumps down on the other side of the couch from Éponine. One of them really should be keeping an eye on Gavroche, but evidently Combeferre has allowed their ward to help him in the kitchen, which seems to be keeping him surprisingly occupied.

Enjolras seats himself in the easychair closest to Grantaire’s end of the sofa, because life is suffering. “I don’t recognize your costumes.”

Grantaire nods, accepting his punishment for a lifetime of needless bitter-bastarding in silence.

Enjolras’s smile tightens before continuing. “Who are you supposed to be?”

_Jesus take the wheel._

Combeferre appears to have decided that his time has come to be deified. “I was actually wondering the same. Éponine?”

“Hm?”

“Your costumes,” Enjolras repeats.

“Oh. R and I are the Wet Bandits—”

“Sticky Bandits,” Grantaire corrects, holding up a masking tape-laden hand with a collection of coins hot-glued to it.

“—and Gav’s our little brown Kevin McAllister.”

“Clever,” Combeferre smiles.

Éponine shrugs. “We more or less had the homeless look down pat, just needed to throw on some feathers and get some of that makeup artist-R magic.” Her M-painted hand extends in demonstration.

“And, apologies,” prompts Enjolras, “Gav is your…?” 

“Hellspawn,” Grantaire says automatically.

“Miscreant.”

“Darlingest child.”

“Mutual legal responsibility,” finishes Éponine before turning back to face Combeferre. “I think I’ve mentioned him to you before?”

“I think you have.” He’s grinning as he wipes out the insides of several perfectly matched mugs, and Grantaire cannot even begin to imagine the nature of the tales she has intimated. 

Blessedly, Combeferre and Éponine fill the silence with mundane chatter until the hot chocolate is finished, the former presenting the full tray to the room like the perfect domestic queer host he is. There may come a day when Grantaire emerges from his cocoon of bitterness and rage as a perfect sweater-clad, beverage-offering butterfly, but that day is not today, so he instead accepts his perfect vegan hot chocolate with a perfect little puff of coconut whipped cream and its perfect sprinkling of cinnamon across the top with as much grace as he can muster (not much) and savors its perfect flavor from his saline island of bi-tter solitude.

“So,” begins Éponine once everyone has finished their astonishingly good beverages that yes, Grantaire is still salty over, because there’s thirteen reasons in this room why Enjolras is with Combeferre and not him, and this beverage is at least three of them (Combeferre himself is another five, Grantaire is six, Enjolras is one, and Grantaire’s math skills probably deserve an additional point somewhere in the tabulations). “Bert and Ernie? Never pegged you for Sesame Street.”

“Is Courfeyrac running around somewhere in a Rubber Duck costume?” Grantaire tries to joke. If nothing else, it succeeds in making Enjolras look thoughtful.

“In fact, he’s running around in full Elmo regalia,” Combeferre responds before turning to Éponine to explain. “Courfeyrac is our third friend. He shares an apartment with Marius, if you remember him at all.”

Because Grantaire is an extremely good friend, he mostly tamps down his snort at the mention of Éponine’s old unilateral flame. Éponine’s too far to inflict bodily injury without notice, but a scathing glance from her promises harm to come if he chooses to continue down this path.

He doesn’t.

“Vaguely,” she smoothly responds. 

“He does an eerily-accurate Elmo impression,” Enjolras elaborates, “and wanted us to be his Big Bird and Oscar.”

“We respectfully declined. This was the compromise.” 

Grantaire is far too sober for the sheer noxious _gayness_ permeating the room. The domesticity is simply _nauseating._ Behind him the door opens and closes, and it seems that Gavroche agrees but had the option of circumventing social norms to remove himself from the situation.

_The parentless bastard._

“Hey, would you—I actually. That series I mentioned the last time I was around? I have them in my room, if you’d like to check them out,” Combeferre offers.

“I actually was wondering about that!” Éponine pushes herself to her feet. “I had the series name on a note at the desk for the next time you came ‘round.”

She follows him out of the room, a true Judas Iscariot, leaving Grantaire to face his cross in miserable silence.

“Éponine seems nice,” Enjolras attempts.

‘Nice’ is the last word anyone would ever use to describe Éponine. “Yep.”

The blond sighs. “How long have you two been…” Enjolras trails off, evidently expecting Grantaire to possess the same ESP that his partner does. “Living together?”

Finally, a question he can fucking answer. “Basically since uni. We weren’t planning on it—not so soon, at least—but with everything with Gav it just made sense.” She’d been hoping for custody since…well, since she’d discovered it was an option, since she realized being 18 mattered for more than just the legal purchase of smokes, but neither of them could have anticipated that the courts would so easily surrender her siblings to her, least of all Éponine herself. After freshman year they’d been planning on sharing a dorm room, but with her unexpected custody they were suddenly looking at off-campus accommodation, and— 

Well, here they are, co-parenting a _child._

“Well, Gav seems great.”

A burst of relief passes through Grantaire as he smiles into the bottom of his empty mug. “Thanks.”

“Would. Would you like more cocoa? I’m sure Combeferre hasn’t served all of it just yet.”

Ugh, right. _Combeferre._ “Yeah, sure.”

He tries (and fails) (miserably) (so entirely totally and completely, in fact) (gay bitter cocoons) not to watch Enjolras walk into the kitchen, only to walk back out again. In fact, his fucking non-hetero mind is in such a haze at the sequence before his very eyes that it barely registers that Enjolras has left the room a second time, much less why, until Enjolras returns from the hallway off to the side with an absolutely mortified expression.

“Um.” It’s a whole and complete sentence by itself as Enjolras seats himself across from Grantaire on the sofa in the space that had previously been occupied by Éponine. “So.”

“So.”

Enjolras gulps. “Your wife might be making out with my roommate in the next room.”

“My _what?”_

Grantaire’s brain races. His last extended love interest—aka a partner in 2015—was in _2015,_ so he has no idea who in the _fuck_ Enjolras could be referring to.

“Um. Partner? The mother of your child?”

Child? He has spawn? “Gavroche?”

“Presumably??” Enjolras somehow seems more uncomfortable than Grantaire, a task which he had long ago deemed impossible.

“Éponine?”

“Yes?” Enjolras looks ready for the drink Grantaire has been prepared for since setting foot in the apartment. 

“Éponine,” Grantaire repeats.

“Yes.”

“Is making out.”

“Mhm.”

“With...with Combeferre?”

Enjolras wordlessly sinks into Éponine’s former seat, and as he does Grantaire rises to begin his exploration of the kitchen. Combeferre seems like the type to have a bottle of white lying around for special occasions, and walking in on one’s partner making out with—well, whatever it is Enjolras seems to think Éponine is to him—certainly seems to fit the bill. 

It doesn’t take long for his hunch to be proved well-founded. _Sauvignon Blanc, perfect._ He also finds an opened bottle of scotch that looks to be from around the middle of the top shelf, presumably left behind by Courfeyrac at some point, and an untouched bottle of cheap vodka that he _knows_ was gifted by Bossuet for some occasion or another. For now, the wine seems sufficient, and soon he’s located two unconventional Christmas mugs and is seated beside Enjolras filling them to two-thirds.

Enjolras watches this whole process carefully in mute silence.

Swirling the wine cautiously, Grantaire ventures to break the quiet. “Is—I mean…how are you feeling?”

The blond gives him a strange look. “You’re—I should be asking—_you have a child together.”_ He seems to realize himself. “Not that there’s any—I don’t mean to cause additional panic, I’m sure you’re—” 

Squinting at the man, Grantaire finally finds his words. “What…what exactly do you think Éponine and I are to each other?”

Color rushes to Enjolras’s cheeks, and it seems suddenly absurd that they’re having this conversation while Grantaire’s hair is teased out in electrocuted-curls and Enjolras is still wearing _that Goddamned muppet nose._ “Co-parents?”

“And _friends.”_

“Friends,” Enjolras repeats.

“Friends who can make out with whoever we want without repercussion.” He catches himself, backtracking. “Well, repercussion from each other. Obviously making out with others’ partners comes with the usual consequences—how are you holding up?”

“How am I—fine, I’m fine, why do you keep asking me that?” Enjolras does seem fine, too: his mouth is formed to a near-smile despite the demand, and something in his eyes has grown warm.

“I mean, you just…with Combeferre—”

“Walking in on my roommate making out with someone is hardly the traumatic experience you seem to expect it to be.” 

“Well yeah, but he’s your…” Understanding dawns on Grantaire as Enjolras continues intently watching him, eyebrows raised.

“Roommate.”

“Your roommate.” 

“And _friend,”_ Enjolras adds, corner of his mouth tugging upward.

“Huh.” It’d be really helpful if his racing mind was capable of, like, productive thought? “Huh.

“So like.” Things are finally beginning to come together. “Ép and Ferre playing tonsil hockey. That’s not…an issue?” 

“Not in the least.”

Another extended pause. “Did he still have the nose on?”

_“Grantaire.”_ As annoyed as he seems, Enjolras appears to have finally realized the struggle he’s been facing Grantaire with, hand flying up to capture the ball of red from his face. “Seeing as you and I are now both clear on our relationship statuses, would you be interested in…” Apparently the blond’s pluck only takes him this far. “More wine? Unless…where’s Gav?”

“Probably your rooftop.”

Enjolras’s brows furrow. “Should we be concerned about that?”

Taking a sip from his mug, Grantaire shrugs. “Maybe later. For now, wine sounds excellent.”

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly less of a fish-slap to the face than the past several, but certainly still contains bits of shellfish.
> 
> "Jimmy, Johnnie, Jamie, and Jack" is a reference to Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, Jameson, and Jack Daniels.
> 
> Azelma is in university and thus not conning people out of candy in a sick-ass Home Alone costume.
> 
> If you enjoyed it, I'd really love to hear from you! You can drop a comment below or reach out to me at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com). :)


End file.
